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Assessing the potential of the unexploited Atlantic purple sea urchin, Arbacia punctulata, for the edible market
Get PDFThe global demand for sea urchin as seafood is currently unmet. Despite exploitation of \u3e 40 species across the world, there is a need to identify other candidate species, especially in regions where diversification in production is sought where species are considered native. The Eastern US presents an opportunity to determine the marketability of the currently unexploited Arbacia punctulata which is naturally distributed from Massachusetts and southwards into the Gulf of Mexico. To determine whether A. punctulata had market potential, it was fed one of the following diets to determine whether the gonad tissue (uni) could be manipulated to increase gonad mass and improve gonad color for the market: dried Ulva lactuca, Salmon pellets (Skretting), Tilapia pellets (Ziegler) or an Urchinomics diet designed for sea urchins either fed for 8 weeks or 12 weeks. All of the pelleted feeds (Salmon, Tilapia and Urchinomics) increased gonad mass and altered the color. The colors of the uni were generally darker than the colors that the market would typically prefer but some individuals did exhibit colors which have been classed as acceptable to the European market. This work highlights that further research is worthwhile to assess the market potential of A. punctulata
CORONAcredits: Program Innovations to Aid Student Completion of Disrupted Fieldwork Abroad Due to the COVID-19 Pandemic
Get PDFThe Spring 2020 semester provided unique challenges for global experiences of all types to meet the intended learning objectives for students due to the COVID-19 pandemic disruption. This was especially true for experiential language and cultural immersion programs where engineering students were in the midst of their fieldwork experience abroad. The COVID-19 disruption presented unique challenges to recreate language and cultural understanding within international engineering fieldwork experiences in the US. This article outlines the response to the COVID-19 pandemic by the Interdisciplinary Global Programs (IGP) at Northern Arizona University (NAU). The IGP response was an innovative interdisciplinary and cross-institutional collaboration between NAU’s international office and faculty across three academic colleges to assist students in completing the interdisciplinary engineering, language, and cultural understanding objectives, absent direct immersion abroad. IGP developed “CORONAcredits” focused on exploration of the worldwide impact of COVID-19 to help students complete their fieldwork experience. The CORONAcredits engaged students in exploration of their personal experiences within the greater context of how different cultures handled the worldwide pandemic, enabling students to continue to build their global understanding from the US. Students analyzed the worldwide response of the unfolding pandemic across cultures and engaged in a mix of assignments that included discussion contributions where students shared their personal experiences abroad. CORONAcredits exposed students to a diversity of approaches to highlight cultural differences and deepen understanding of global, economic, environmental, and societal contexts present in the way that each student navigated the pandemic both domestically and abroad. Findings highlight the importance of flexibility and an interdisciplinary design, guiding students in their intercultural reflections, and incorporating new materials into module design. CORONAcredits can provide a “break in case of emergency” navigation plan that can be employed when unforeseen circumstances arise in engineering study abroad contexts
Tipping Toward a New Academic Consciousness
Get PDFThe COVID-19 pandemic and racial reckoning of 2020-2021 have led many faculty in higher education to see the profession and their place in it in a new light (Walton, 2022). While people are broadly engaged in a large-scale cultural re-evaluation of work, labor conditions, and equity, this awakening has posed an existential threat to many academics’ senses of identity, purpose, and community. Through autoethnographic narratives, the authors make meaning of this tipping point through the feminist intersections of space, power, and consciousness. The authors explore coaching and mutual mentoring as strategies for creating and holding space for disrupting these norms and expectations and for reimagining mentoring, collaboration, and collective action in ways that respond to our current realities and to changing academic work, moving us toward professional work that supports faculty flourishing
Home health care professionals’ experiences of working in integrated teams during the COVID-19 pandemic: a qualitative thematic study
Get PDFBackground:
Since COVID-19 emerged, over 514 million COVID-19 cases and 6 million COVID-19-related deaths have been reported worldwide. Older persons receiving home health care often have co-morbidities that require advanced medical care, and are at risk of becoming severely ill or dying from COVID-19. In Sweden, over 10,000 COVID-19-related deaths have been reported among persons receiving municipal home health and social care. Home health care professionals have been working with the patients most at risk if infected. Most research has focused on the experiences of professionals in hospitals and assistant nurses in a home care setting. It is therefore valuable to study the experiences of the registered nurses and physicians working in home health care during the COVID-19 pandemic to learn lessons to inform future work.
Method:
A thematic qualitative study design using a semi-structured interview guide.
Results:
The health care professionals experienced being forced into changed ways of working, which disrupted building and maintaining relationships with other health care professionals, and interrupted home health care. The health care professionals described being forced into digital and phone communication instead of in-person meetings, which negatively influenced the quality of care. The COVID-19 pandemic brought worry about illness for the health care professionals, including worrying about infecting patients, co-workers, and themselves, as well as worry about upholding the provision of health care because of increasing sick leave. The health care professionals felt powerless in the face of their patients’ declining health. They also faced worry and guilt from the patients’ next of kin.
Conclusion:
Home health care professionals have faced the COVID-19 pandemic while working across organizational borders, caring for older patients who have been isolated during the pandemic and trying to prevent declining health and feelings of isolation. Due to the forced use of digital and phone communication instead of in-person visits, the home health care professionals experienced a reduction in the patients’ quality of care and difficulty maintaining good communication between the professions
Deep learning for neural decoding in motor cortex
No full textObjective. Neural decoding is an important tool in neural engineering and neural data analysis. Of various machine learning algorithms adopted for neural decoding, the recently introduced deep learning is promising to excel. Therefore, we sought to apply deep learning to decode movement trajectories from the activity of motor cortical neurons. Approach. In this paper, we assessed the performance of deep learning methods in three different decoding schemes, concurrent, time-delay, and spatiotemporal. In the concurrent decoding scheme where the input to the network is the neural activity coincidental to the movement, deep learning networks including artificial neural network (ANN) and long-short term memory (LSTM) were applied to decode movement and compared with traditional machine learning algorithms. Both ANN and LSTM were further evaluated in the time-delay decoding scheme in which temporal delays are allowed between neural signals and movements. Lastly, in the spatiotemporal decoding scheme, we trained convolutional neural network (CNN) to extract movement information from images representing the spatial arrangement of neurons, their activity, and connectomes (i.e. the relative strengths of connectivity between neurons) and combined CNN and ANN to develop a hybrid spatiotemporal network. To reveal the input features of the CNN in the hybrid network that deep learning discovered for movement decoding, we performed a sensitivity analysis and identified specific regions in the spatial domain. Main results. Deep learning networks (ANN and LSTM) outperformed traditional machine learning algorithms in the concurrent decoding scheme. The results of ANN and LSTM in the time-delay decoding scheme showed that including neural data from time points preceding movement enabled decoders to perform more robustly when the temporal relationship between the neural activity and movement dynamically changes over time. In the spatiotemporal decoding scheme, the hybrid spatiotemporal network containing the concurrent ANN decoder outperformed single-network concurrent decoders. Significance. Taken together, our study demonstrates that deep learning could become a robust and effective method for the neural decoding of behavior
Multipolymer microsphere delivery of SARS-CoV-2 antigens
Get PDFEffective antigen delivery facilitates antiviral vaccine success defined by effective immune protective responses against viral exposures. To improve severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) antigen delivery, a controlled biodegradable, stable, biocompatible, and nontoxic polymeric microsphere system was developed for chemically inactivated viral proteins. SARS-CoV-2 proteins encapsulated in polymeric microspheres induced robust antiviral immunity. The viral antigen-loaded microsphere system can preclude the need for repeat administrations, highlighting its potential as an effective vaccine.
Statement of significance
Successful SARS-CoV-2 vaccines were developed and quickly approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). However, each of the vaccines requires boosting as new variants arise. We posit that injectable biodegradable polymers represent a means for the sustained release of emerging viral antigens. The approach offers a means to reduce immunization frequency by predicting viral genomic variability. This strategy could lead to longer-lasting antiviral protective immunity. The current proof-of-concept multipolymer study for SARS-CoV-2 achieve these metrics.
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